I chose the name The Chaostician for this blog. To live up to this name, this blog should be about chaos, in particular, what a physicist means when referring to ‘chaos theory’. Let’s begin with an example. Something known as the logistic map is (arguably) the simplest chaotic system. We will now describe and analyze it in detail.
I chose the name The Chaostician for this blog. To live up to this name, this blog should be about chaos, in particular, what a physicist means when referring to ‘chaos theory’. This seven part series is my explanation of chaos theory to a popular audience. Chaos is a mechanism that allows deterministic objects to behave unpredictably. I will explain why this happens and what kinds of predictions we can make when something is chaotic.
1491 is a summary of recent changes in (scholarly) understanding of the peoples in the Americas immediately before Columbus. Part I argues that there were many more people here than you think. Part II argues that they got here much earlier than you think. Part III argues that they had a much larger impact on the environment than you think. The new understanding of the Americas is really cool. I just wish that the book had been written by one of the scientists, instead of a professional popular science writer. It is obvious to me, from reading it, that the author is not and never has been a scientist.
I do not believe that religion, even true religion, is created ex nihilo. Instead, God organizes His church mostly out of pre-existing institutions and beliefs, which are then built on and sanctified.
The Mormon ethical system is distinct from modern ethical theories like utilitarianism and deontology – and also from ancient ethical theories like virtue ethics and natural law. Although there is significant overlap with other ethical theories, the emphasis on covenants is unusual. Here, I describe this covenant system of ethics.
Piketty has written a data-driven book on economic history, which is accessible to a broad audience. The book is full of graphs (even more so than this review) and involves calculations and equations in its arguments. In my opinion, this makes it a better work of scholarship than most other books about history. As with most (all?) books on economics, there is a political bias. What bias? Well, this is a book with the word ‘Capital’ written in big red letters across the cover. It has been politically influential. Piketty convinced Elizabeth Warren to advocate for a wealth tax. The power of capital, relative to income, fell dramatically during the World Wars and Great Depression. Since then, capital has been making a comeback. Piketty expects this trend to continue. The growth of capital is inherently faster than the growth of income in a capitalist society, except during major crises like World Wars. To counteract this, Piketty proposes a global tax on wealth.
Einstein’s most revolutionary idea is that gravity is geometry. The theorems of geometry are not eternal truths, but can be changed by mass and energy. This is my first longer explanation of ideas that are well established in science, but not well understood by the public. To keep this from becoming too long and overwhelming, I have split the six parts of this explanation into three blog posts. The two parts for today are about black holes and the experimental evidence of general relativity.
Einstein’s most revolutionary idea is that gravity is geometry. The theorems of geometry are not eternal truths, but can be changed by mass and energy. This is my first longer explanation of ideas that are well established in science, but not well understood by the public. To keep this from becoming too long and overwhelming, I have split the six parts of this explanation into three blog posts. The two parts for today are about how the write the Pythagorean Theorem for spacetime and how to modify it to include gravity.
Einstein’s most revolutionary idea is that gravity is geometry. The theorems of geometry are not eternal truths, but can be changed by mass and energy. This is my first longer explanation of ideas that are well established in science, but not well understood by the public. To keep this from becoming too long and overwhelming, I have split the six parts of this explanation into three blog posts. The two parts for today are the introduction and an explanation of how different geometries have different versions of the Pythagorean Theorem.
